Synergy product manager Paul Hemmings says, “one of the new opportunities that’s come with moving to the cloud is that it’s much easier now to integrate one software with another”. APIs (application programming interfaces) provide this mode of integration. Paul knows what he’s talking about, but why on earth should we care? Good question. Glad you asked. Here’s the downlow on what the hell APIs are, and why they’re important to your AEC design business.

APIs — what they are and why you care

APIs are a set of rules that allow one computer or software to talk to another. That’s the simplified version, but it’s really all you need to know — and essentially, it’s all that us non-programmer-types can grasp, so, you know…

According to technology media site Propmodo, they can act as a translator between two systems that don’t otherwise know how to communicate.“ These amazing protocols can push and pull a massive amount of data and have enabled the modern tech stack.”

Right, so, we know what they do. But why do we architecture, engineering and construction design business bods care? Well, we care because these days, digitization is a fact of modern business — we have apps to run our accounting, our project management, our internal and external communications activities, our invoicing systems, our diaries, and pretty much everything else we rely on, up to and including our recreational enjoyment of Candy Crush.

So, software solutions provide more and more of the backbone of our business operations — a fact that is only set to proportionately increase ad infinitum — and therefore the ways these programs interact is going to determine the flow (or lack thereof) of our workflows. Hashtag fact.

Use and connect apps you and your team already work with

In its article The digital workforce experience, Deloitte says that the average number of systems workers must access as part of their day-to-day jobs has risen from eight to 11.5. “27 percent of surveyed workers estimate they lose up to an entire day every week on irrelevant emails and messages.” That gives pause for thought, doesn’t it?

Firstly, we need to consider the amount of time — and potential sanity — to be saved by making sure that the 11.5 systems actually talk to each other. How many minutes, and days, and dollars we’d get back if the workflows of ourselves and our staff didn’t need to include the ever-clumsy shutting of one program down, waiting for another to load, exporting into whatever file format we need, uploading into a different system, etc. How great if the systems just interacted. If they just ‘plugged in’ to each other. Raise your hand if you’d miss the software system juggling palaver? No. Us neither.

Secondly, there are certainly software systems and apps that your staff use regularly as an integral part of their work. Whether it’s CAD software for drawings, the Drawboard Projects app for markups, Synergy for timesheets and project portals, or anything else, these are already firmly integrated into workflows. We know how to use them already. They enable us to work more easily. We understand and like them. For that reason, if you adopt a new software and it uses APIs to integrate the apps you already use, adoption is going to be much higher, much smoother, and you’ll see considerably less resistance from staff. Time-saving on two levels!

Meet your unique business needs with APIs

In that same vein, being able to bolt together various software applications that meet the specialist needs of your business and your workers is crucial to the usability and success of your digital infrastructure. If Janet can use your business management software — let’s call it Synergy, for the sake of argument — to enter her timesheets while she’s on site, manage her project’s budgets, and also mark-up her drawings with Drawboard Projects and share them within that software, Janet’s specific workflow is supported at each individual juncture of her daily operations. Janet is happy. Janet is not getting stuck wasting time because your business software doesn’t have the capacity to meet her needs as a designer. And we’re happy, because Janet’s happy.

APIs let you utilize the software of specialists

The other huge advantage of our friend the API is that it enables companies to leverage the services and applications of specialist, niche service providers to build their consumer-facing, end products. Asking what the what now? Well, we’ve got an illustrative example for you *wink*.

Synergy uses APIs to integrate with our clients’ favorite business accounting software — Xero, QuickBooks Online, and MYOB. We’ve chosen to integrate with these standard accounting software experts (rather than replace them), so we can focus on the unique project accounting needs of architects and engineers. We didn’t go out and reinvent the wheel by building our own accounting app — Xero, QuickBooks Online, and MYOB have already made brilliant ones and they’re the specialists.

For you, single data entry and up-to-date financials means informed business owners and project managers and happy bookkeepers and accountants.

On the flip side of that is 12d Synergy, an architectural, engineering, and construction data management and collaboration system that uses our APIs to connect with us. They explain the connection like this:

“The integration automatically creates jobs in 12d Synergy with your project information from Synergy, such as contacts, details and attributes. Jobs are automatically created complete with a folder structure, tasks, contacts, attributes and templates. Your documents can also be automatically populated with these attributes, such as client name or address. This is a massive timesaver, eliminating error-prone double data entry and creating a single source of truth across both products”.

Bravo 12d, well done Synergy, who cares? You care — or you should — because these brilliant little APIs mean you get the best of all the specific software systems, apps, and platforms that relate to your business. And, you get to use the support associated with these specialist providers.

Make use of more easily accessed and understood code

Lastly, but not least importantly, APIs are user friendly, folks. Often, the code for APIs are publicly available, and they’re free. There is also an abundance of online support and tutorials for API use — in fact, Programmableweb.com have an API University online. Tip your mortarboard to that!

When you’re next looking at your business software, consider which other solutions it uses APIs for. Smooth integration has a very real impact on your bottom line by way of time-saving. It also has a very real impact on the general frustration levels of you and your staff. APIs are our friends. That’s another hashtag fact.

Recommended reading

• The death of ERP — what does the AEC design industry do now it’s gone?
• Why you need AEC industry-specific software
• Best practice — Change management for cloud software adoption

Ever looked at your over-stuffed email inbox and thought, “372 unread emails? Yessssss!”… Nope, neither have we. Emails are like your partner’s visiting relative that turns up unannounced and parks themselves on your couch — they clutter up your life, they’re confusing, they consume your most valuable resources (time, lifeforce, will-to-live), and you can never tell when their domination of your real-estate will end.

We’ve talked about it before here and there. However, with our portals update just released, we thought now might be the perfect time to remind ourselves why cloud collaboration means working better together, with less eye-rolling at emails. And why that means better and clearer communication, better bottom line, and more time for design.

Working better together — collaboration and the future of the AEC industry

In her Synergy2014 conference address about “the way the world is changing and how that might impact your business”, Sue Holliday flagged collaboration as one of the major drivers of change in the built environment design industry. Sue explained that, overall, the industry acknowledged collaboration was only going to increase in the future, that it would increase productivity, and that it would drive innovation. Yay for all of that! What’s not to love?

Sue also pointed out that collaborative work practices within the AEC industry need to be encouraged with the integration of project delivery tech. In other words, if we’ve got future flourishing in mind, we need to “equip clients, designers, contractors, tradespeople and manufacturers with access to integrated technologies”. Get ‘em on the same platforms, kids. Or at least make the platforms the same height so they can jump across from one to the next gracefully.

Total Synergy’s marketing manager, Jamie Millar says, “the less time people spend in their inboxes the more time they’re doing meaningful work. Collaborative communication like enterprise social networks or team communication systems (think Slack or Microsoft Teams) overcomes the bad habit of email — you can post an idea centrally, everyone can be aware of it, contribute as much or as little as required, without having to see emails or read a whole bunch of threads that ultimately don’t relate to what they’re working on.”

Clarity in the cloud — crystal communication

One of the major benefits of cloud collaboration software has to be the style of collaborative communications Jamie alludes to. What is ‘collaborative communications’, you ask? (well, that’s what we asked anyway). It’s a social network-esque concept, only for business. Where you and your team can chat in real-time, threaded convos — often referred to as ‘Facebook for business’ (until Facebook launched Workplace, which is, in effect, Facebook for business). It’d be derelict of us not to plug our portals at this point — y’know, project collaboration for architects and engineers — a portal is great for project-specific collaborative communications *wink*.

That said, the benefit of collaborative communications is not just the reduction of emails, meetings and the streamlining of work. There’s some solidly good juju to be gained from your staff interacting on internal social channels as well. Master of Applied Positive Psychology and business consultant, Robert Rosales, wrote that in our “service-based economy, work gets done with and through people, and organizations depend on positive interpersonal connections to accomplish their goals”. Robert isn’t wrong. If your team members feel personally connected to both their colleagues and to the goals of the business as a whole, they do better work. That’s the fact. Happy team, happy work, happy life (that’s the saying isn’t it? It should be).

Clear, easy and timely communications between an organization’s staff, team members, contractors, and clients — as facilitated through cloud-based collaboration software — is going to deliver better communication, closer colleagues, and greater, business-wide … Synergy (shameless namedropping, but it’s true!).

Better bottom line up in the cloud

The 2012 McKinsey Global report, “The social economy: unlocking value and productivity through social technologies” said that, “the average interaction worker spends an estimated 28 percent of the workweek managing email and nearly 20 percent looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks”. That’s 48 percent of each workers’ week spent on finding and filing. 48 percent! The report also said that when companies implement internal cloud comms and social networks “messages become content” and create, “a searchable record of knowledge” which “can reduce, by as much as 35 percent, the time employees spend searching for information”. That time saving isn’t even taking into account the amount freed from email wrestling every day. What’s more, “additional value can be realized through faster, more efficient, more effective collaboration, both within and between enterprises”. Hear that? It’s the sound of your business’s financial efficiency skyrocketing into the cloud. Sign. Us. Up!

More time for dreaming up design

Arguably, the most notable advantage of cloud collaboration is the capacity to have your systems and software all ‘plug in’ to the one place. As Jamie puts it, “you should integrate systems, so they work together for the benefit of your project”. Your various project apps and software, your key workers and planners, your clients and contractors, the systems and protocols of your business — everything converging in the cloud. In terms of working together it’s positively dreamy up there.

Ok, so WITCFM? — (what’s in the cloud for me?)

Thinking about what all this means for our users, here are some cloud-tastic examples of the benefits you might enjoy on the job. Picture this, if you will:

• Updating the entire team (at once) with on-site progress pics and commentary from your phone
• Snapping and sharing proof of delivered goods, or defects, with notes
• Sharing specifications for finishes, furniture, or material with all the contractors on a project
• Getting digitally signed, and shared approvals so that everyone knows what’s got the go-ahead
• Putting out for tender through a project portal so all bidders have equal access to tender docs and info
• Have a digital trail of who’s seen what, and when, with formal transmittals
• A universally accessible hub for documents submitted by various consultants

… And the list goes on.

In terms of alleviating email induced anxiety, streamlining built environment design practices, and democratizing ideas and info access, cloud collaboration is the equivalent of giving that gastly house guest the keys to your brother-in-law’s place and dropping them off out the front. Bye-eeeeee!